Living in Kathmandu has its perks as well as its downsides. Be it the pretty cafes or the marvelous historical sites, Kathmandu is a city that’s very much alive and bustling. It’s a city that demands to be explored. However, the traffic, pollution, and potholed roads often take away from its beauty. We asked the residents of Kathmandu what they thought was the best and worst things about living in Kathmandu. Here are their answers.

Have you ever wondered what Kathmandu looked like many years back? Was it just as chock-a-block with concrete houses and plagued with traffic back then as well? A photo exhibition at The Taragaon Museum might answer some of your questions.

We all want to eat healthy but try as we might we aren’t able to stick to our ‘resolution’ of eating fruits and veggies for more than a few days or a week at the most. But eating clean is possible.

Putali Nepal is a social enterprise that provides training on menstrual health management and sells menstrual cups in Nepal. Additionally, they give trainings on proper use of menstrual cups, especially to women in rural areas of Nepal where menstrual taboos and unhygienic sanitation practices still persist. The organization also distributes ‘Menstrupedia Comics’ which is a guide to educate people on menstruation and reproductive health. This comic is available in both Nepali and English.

According to the Zero Waste International Alliance, zero-waste can be defined as “the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.”

Almost every restaurant menu has chicken wings on it. And every restaurant has one version of this popular dish. Some serve their dish spicy while some do a basic fried rendition of it with a tangy dip on the side. House of Wings at Jhochhen, Thamel, that opened its doors about five months ago, does things a little differently. This eatery focuses on serving a variety of chicken wings, catering to all kinds of taste buds.

On any ordinary day you will find Laxmi Magar cruising through the streets of Kathmandu on her bicycle. And on the no-so-ordinary days you will see her racing down the most difficult trails at high altitudes clad in biking gear and on her professional bike, usually on the frontlines. Laxmi is one of Nepal’s top mountain bikers and as one of the only female cyclists regularly competing in international races she is a big name in the cycling community.

A big part of the Nepali fashion industry is focused on occasion- and event-wear. They make and promote clothing items like lehengas, saris, kurtas and gowns which are not only expensive but are actually things that we will eventually end up wearing two to three times at the most. For casual clothing, we mostly look for branded items manufactured abroad as not many of us are aware that casual clothing of good quality is also made in Nepal too. This is why friends Bilap Rai, Alina Rai and Sandipa Dangol opened Siyo Nepal, a company that primarily produces casual clothing for every body size and shape.

Among the many different forms of art, urban sketching is a relatively new one. This art movement is led by Urban Sketchers, a non-profit organization with a global community of artists who draw on location, capturing the life that flows around them, wherever they happen to be.

Let’s suppose that the famous ship sailed by the founder of Athens (according to Greek mythology) Theseus is kept at a harbor as a museum showpiece. As the ship is thousands of years old, its parts keep rotting away, one by one, and each part is replaced with a new one. Eventually, all parts of the ship have been replaced. And so, the question arises, is the restored ship still the same as the original one?